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Rise of the Tiger Nation

Asian-Americans are now the country's best-educated, highest-earning and fastest-growing racial group. They share with American Jews both the distinction and the occasional burden of immigrant success.

By

Lee Siegel

Updated Oct. 27, 2012 9:32 a.m. ET

Last March, an interviewer archly asked President Barack Obama whether he was aware that he had been "surpassed" by basketball phenomenon Jeremy Lin "as the most famous Harvard graduate." The question was misformulated. If there was any surpassing going on, it was that Mr. Lin had become, briefly, more famous than Mr. Obama as the country's most exemplary figure from a hitherto marginalized minority.

Mr. Lin's triumph on the basketball court is a living metaphor for the social group he comes from. No one...

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Rise of the Tiger Nation

Asian-Americans are now the country's best-educated, highest-earning and fastest-growing racial group. They share with American Jews both the distinction and the occasional burden of immigrant success. WSJ's Stu Woo talks to author Lee Siegel.